Grisette (French) - The 18th Century Grisette

The 18th Century Grisette

In 1730 Jonathan Swift was already using grisette in English to signify qualities of both flirtatiousness and intellectual aspiration. (See The grisette in poetry below.) The grisette also makes an appearance in Lawrence Sterne's 1768 novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. In Chapter II of the novel, the Reverend Mr. Yorick (the narrator and Sterne's alter ego) recounts his obsessions with Parisian grisettes, and especially with a particularly beautiful one who worked in a Paris glove shop:

"The beautiful grisette looked sometimes at the gloves, then sideways to the window, then at the gloves, and then at me. I was not disposed to break silence. I followed her example: so, I looked at the gloves, then to the window, then at the gloves, and then at her, and so on alternately. I found I lost considerably in every attack: she had a quick black eye, and shot through two such long and silken eyelashes with such penetration, that she look'd into my very heart and reins. It may seem strange, but I could actually feel she did."

One of the most famous grisettes of the 18th century was Madame du Barry (1743–1793). However, she soon rose well beyond her initial social status. The illegitimate daughter of a seamstress, she had moved to Paris at the age of 15, where, using the name Jeanne Rancon, she worked first as an assistant to a young hairdresser with whom she had an affair and later as a milliner's assistant in a shop named A La Toilette. In 1763, her beauty came to the attention of Jean du Barry, a fashionable pimp/procurer and casino owner. He made her his mistress and helped establish her career as a courtesan in the highest circles of Parisian society, where she took several wealthy men as her 'benefactors', including the Duke of Richelieu. On her marriage to du Barry's brother, she became Marie-Jeanne, Comtesse du Barry, and in April 1769 she became the official mistress (maîtresse declarée or maîtresse en titre) of King Louis XV of France.